'Grey's Anatomy' Star Ellen Pompeo Is About to Make $20 Million a Year—and She Isn't Afraid to Talk About It
It’s a new day in Hollywood—one when women are not afraid or embarrassed to speak out about the money they make, or aren’t making in the recent cases of Catt Sadler and Michelle Williams.
So it’s incredibly refreshing to hear another very public woman, Ellen Pompeo, open up about with pride about becoming dramatic television’s highest-paid actress. Most of us know the actress for her long-running role as Meredith Grey on the Shonda Rhimes' behemoth, Grey’s Anatomy. (And yes, people, it is still on the air and doing very well, thank you very much.) In a new Hollywood Reporter story, Pompeo gets real about how she got to her new contract (worth more than $20 million a year) and the struggles, both internal and external, along the way.
"I'm 48 now, so I've finally gotten to the place where I'm OK asking for what I deserve, which is something that comes only with age," she opens, going on to describe that while she might not be perceived as "relevant" or buzzy these days, she's been good at her role for 14 years which she (rightly) counts as a serious accomplishment. She may not have become the movie star she once thought she'd be, but the business and her financial freedom is way more important. Pompeo credits Rhimes with empowering her to ask for what she believes she deserves—no small feat for many women in the world, famous or not. Says Rhimes, "As a woman, what I know is you can't approach anything from a point of view of 'I don't deserve' or 'I'm not going to ask for because I don't want other people to get upset.' And I know for a fact that when men go into these negotiations, they go in hard and ask for the world."
Pompeo also says the departure of Patrick Dempsey in 2015 opened a door for her on the negotiations front. In the past, he could be leveraged against her in a "we have Patrick, we don't need you" way that she says happened for years. "At one point, I asked for $5,000 more than him just on principle, because the show is Grey's Anatomy and I'm Meredith Grey. They wouldn't give it to me. And I could have walked away, so why didn't I? It's my show; I'm the number one. I'm sure I felt what a lot of these other actresses feel: Why should I walk away from a great part because of a guy? You feel conflicted but then you figure, 'I'm not going to let a guy drive me out of my own house.'" Damn, straight.
As Pompeo knew to be true, the show survived. And now she's got an insanely lucrative contract and back-end deal, producing and directing credits, and real power. But even when she felt empowered and supported by her boss, she worried about looking greedy by asking for too much. "But CAA compiled a list of stats for me, and Grey's has generated nearly $3 billion for Disney. When your face and your voice have been part of something that's generated $3 billion for one of the biggest corporations in the world, you start to feel like, 'OK, maybe I do deserve a piece of this.'"
She wants to set an example for other women to seize their moments too. And we can all take that example to heart, even those of us whose paychecks are made up of far fewer zeros. And while she doesn't think that the only solution to the imbalance is more women in power, Pompeo does think it is something that should happen. It's the kind of work environment she knows and has learned from, thanks to Shonda Rhimes. "And now my eight-year-old daughter gets to come here and see fierce females in charge. She loves to sit in the director's chair with the headphones on yelling "Action" and "Cut." She's growing up in an environment where she's completely comfortable with power. I don't know any other environment in Hollywood where I could provide that for her. Now I hope that changes…and soon."
We need more women to speak this frankly about finances and the often cruel imbalances of power if we ever hope to make real and lasting changes in the pay gap. So well done, Mer.
